Memorial Day
A couple months ago I told Justin that we should take our kids and both sets of grandparents to the Mesa City Cemetery and tell our kids stories about our family members buried there. I thought it would make a good Sunday or Family Home Evening activity. I want my children to identify with their ancestors and feel like they can learn from them. I especially want them to feel like they can develop some of the same good qualities or avoid some of the poor ones. They had also never been to a cemetery so it would be a new experience for them.
Justin and I never got around to organizing it until today. Justin's mom was planning a lunch BBQ and swimming for Memorial Day and told me she was thinking of inviting my parents and asked about time preferences since she was thinking of doing it around dinner time. The idea of the cemetery popped into my head and I mentioned that I thought it would be neat to do the BBQ earlier in the day and then take everyone out to the cemetery since we would have all the grandparents together. She liked the idea and so it's just what we did.
On the way over we taught Brighton and Adaira some cemetery "etiquette" about being reverent and not stepping on gravestones. They did a pretty good job! Our first stop was at the graves of Grammie Irma (Justin's paternal grandmother) and K'Lee (Justin's sister). Grandpa Dale talked about how Grammie Irma worked hard and raised he and his brother all by herself after they lost their father at a young age. He talked about how thoughtful she was and how she made a point to always send her friends and family birthday cards each year. She had many grandchildren, grandchildren-in-laws, and great grandchildren and and I can attest that she remembered each of us every year. Dale Sr. said that after her death, some friends who did not know she had died called him because they knew something was wrong because they hadn't received a birthday card from her.
Grandma Jo told us about K'Lee and how even though she couldn't see or talk, she loved music. She could feel the beat and when they would take her to church she would pound a beat on the side of the pew during the hymns. I remember her often sitting in her room with her electric keyboard in her lap and she would push the keys and move her head up and down and side to side like she was relishing the musical sounds.
The next stop was at the grave of my Uncle Bill (my dad's brother). He died in a pedestrian accident on Halloween of 2000. My dad told stories of how Uncle Bill's nickname was "Wild Bill" because he was an excellent fast pitch softball pitcher and he would purposely throw off the batters by throwing his pitches in a wide range between their chins and their knees. My dad was his catcher and said he still has a sore area in his hand to prove that Uncle Bill was a mighty fast pitcher. Back in the 50s when men's church softball was a big deal, their team won the "national" church softball championships in Salt Lake City two years in a row. Uncle Bill also flew airplanes and even crashed one upside down, but wasn't hurt. My dad also said that Uncle Bill was an example of why you should control your temper. When they were younger he was working on a tractor tire and had a big wrench in his hand. Uncle Bill couldn't get the tire loose and became so angry that he hit the tire as hard as he could with the wrench. The wrench bounced right back off the rubber tire and hit him in the mouth, chipping his tooth. My dad said that in Uncle Bill's patriarchal blessing it was mentioned that he had been protected from "the destroying angel" at many times during his life (until it caught up with him in 2000!) I remember Uncle Bill for his hilarious sense of humor and I can still see his face and hear his chuckle in my head when I think of him. He was always laughing about something.
I forgot that next to Uncle Bill lays my cousin Kess. He died in a car accident probably about a year after coming home from his mission. It was such a sad event for the whole family and he is missed. We are grateful that he was living righteously when he died and we hope to see him again someday.
Below is Justin's Grandma Rena (Joanna's mother). She was remembered for loving all of her children and grandchildren, NO MATTER WHAT. She was always supportive and wanting to help her children. I have heard Justin before describe her as one of the few individuals he always believed loved him unconditionally. He loved going swimming at her house when he was younger and remembers how they would run wild around her house and she would never get mad at them (only Granddad did...) Even at the beginnings of her illness when Brighton was just a baby, she always told us to bring him over and let her watch him. She watched him for us a couple times so we could attend the temple. She was a wonderful woman and is sorely missed by all of her family. She died in October of 2008 from ALS, aka Lou Gehrig's Disease.
Some cute pictures of Adaira. Her hair had been in those braids going on two days and she had swam in them all morning, but they held together pretty well. She cried that night when I took them out for bath time.
Below are Dale Sr.'s grandparents, Dee Dee and Dandy. Dale told of how Dandy was always a good example for him and how he helped reactivate Dale in the church. Dale also told how his Uncle Johnny buzzed Holbrook, AZ so low that Dandy had to "hit the deck" and get down in the street for fear he would have been hit by the plane.
Below is my paternal grandmother, Dorothy Ellsworth. She was a school teacher before marrying my grandfather. She died when my dad was just six years old. Originally her family was told that she died of a brain aneurysm, but later information made my dad and his brothers think that she may have died from Valley Fever. Her death certificate lists her death as a heart attack. My dad doesn't remember much about her since she died when he was so young, but letters from her to my grandfather while she traveled with her three little boys back and forth from UT show a woman who deeply loved her three little boys. I'm sure she was heartbroken to leave them, and I imagine how differently the lives of my dad and uncles would have been shaped had they been lucky enough to have been raised and loved by her.
Below is my paternal grandfather. He raised my dad and his two brothers all on his own after his wife died. My dad recalls that he put a bench seat between the rear two wheels of his tractor so his three boys could ride behind him out in the fields. He wasn't active in the church, but he was a man of integrity and dignity. At his funeral my dad was approached by someone who told him that my grandfather had helped out many people in the community financially, and that he had a habit of giving money to the pastors of new churches in town to help them get started in teaching the word of God. My dad told the following story, "In the early 1940s, my grandfather, Harry, sent several trucks through Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, and other states to pick up black workers for the farms. When they took the new workers out to the field, they asked my father (Ed) 'Missa Ed, is 'ere snakes in this he' field?' and my dad said that there weren't, so they got started and my dad went home. About an hour later he came back to check on them and they were all lined up in front of one of the cotton trailers. He asked why they weren't working and they said 'Missa Ed, we thought you said there weren't no snakes in this he' field...' and they moved to the side and there were 14 rattle snakes hanging on the trailer. The workers refused to go back in the field, so my dad and grandfather had to go down to Guadalupe and get some of the Yacqui Indians to do the work for them. They weren't afraid of the snakes."
I never had a chance to meet either of my dad's parents, I look forward to the day when I get to.
Below are the graves of my great grandparents. They moved down to Mesa from Show Low in the early 1900s (1920s maybe?) so their children could attend high school. Harry was raised in a polygamist family and had dozens of brothers and sisters. I don't know much about his wife Margaret, but I do know that she stepped in to help out with my dad and his brothers after their mother died. I was once told by my Uncle Dale that if they dared step into Grandpa Harry's house without removing the hat on their head, Harry would smack the hat right off their head (threatening to take their head with it) and tell them they were not to disrespect his wife by wearing a hat in their home. Times have sure changed, haven't they?
My mom's parents aren't buried at the Mesa Cemetery, but she shared stories of her parents as well. My mom was a surprise child born to her parents when they were in their 40s. Her closest living sibling was 18 years older than her. She said her mother, Hannah Beckstead, was very generous. They lived close to the dump in Phoenix and there were many transients who lived at the dump. Any time Hannah saw the transients walking by she would offer them food or something to drink. She would also allow them to take showers in her home. I joked that this must be why my house growing up was like a halfway house with short term visitors living with us off and on. My grandfather, Logan Beckstead, was described as having a calm temperament and worked as a postal worker and farmer. My mom said that when her dad was about 70 she came home and he was sitting out under a tree smoking his pipe. She went over to him and he told her what a happy man he was because he had lived his life right and didn't have any regrets. He said he'd always been honest and faithful to her mother and his fellow man, and that he was glad that now that he had time to sit and think, he could feel comfort in the way he lived his life rather than feeling regret. My mom said that this conversation had always stuck with her.
The last grave we visited was that of Joanna's grandfather. He was the first dentist in Mesa and was also Mayor of Mesa in the 1950's. I forgot to snap a picture of her grandmother's grave, Ileen Curnutt, but Joanna said that she was a lucky little girl because she always had beautiful new clothes to wear because her grandmother sewed all of her dresses and coats up until she was a teenager. She also taught Joanna to sew as well.
I was also there...Thank you to Adaira for capturing a shot of me.
Little Dale didn't have a clue to what we were doing so he just played around and acted cute the whole time. I couldn't help but snap a bunch of pictures of him.
Shortly after arriving home from the cemetery the kids had to enjoy a little bit of ditch swimming since it only runs full twice a month for irrigation.
Dale didn't last too long, the water was actually colder this time around than it has been previously. Brighton and Justin both went through the 30' tunnel. The current was slow but they got through without needing to come up for air. There were a few inches of air in the top of the pipe had things gone wrong but they were covered in spiderwebs.
Our "neighbors" Bob and Joanne (they board horses in our neighborhood and we see them pretty much every day, more so than any of our other neighbors, but they don't actually live in the neighborhood) told us they were taking their horse out for a birthday ride around the neighborhood that evening and they would come by our house to give us a ride if we wanted them to. Who gets to ride in a horse drawn carriage? Of course we took them up on their offer.
They have 4 of these huge draft horses!
Sitting in the front row doesn't give you the best view when it's pulled by such a big horse... I hear the view from the slightly elevated second row is better. It was even more unpleasant when the horse passed gas...
I thought I wasn't in this picture... would have posted the second one I took but Adaira's eyes were closed!
It was quite the eventful Memorial Day! It really felt good to have done something special to honor that day, rather than spend it as just another day off.
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